A narrowboats journey through repair, cruising, and other joys of the english waterways.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Wildlife Survey - yeah right.

Martin Clark drew my attention to the BW wildlife survey of 2008, and observed that once again, there are no canada geese on the waterways. On closer inspection I see the survey is done by volunteers, but have you seen the questionnaire? In my opinon (and I was chairman of the uni wildlife society once)it is AWFUL. Spiders aren't mentioned nor honey bees (which feed on the wild flowers along the towpath), and there is no reference to waterlife at all - come on, are there REALLY no fish in the waters, or waterboatmen or any other waterborne wildlife? Is the Mallard the only duck we are interested in? Good grief, this is not a wildlife survey, this is a tick the boxes and make it up over dinner survey. I was always under the impression that a wildlife survey gives an indication of the natural habitat and diversity across the country, and the influence of seasons and man made stuff on it. Not only this but Dr Mark Robinson, British Waterways’ national ecology manager, says:

"Over half the population lives within five miles of one of our canals or rivers so we’d like as many people as possible to visit their local waterway this summer, whether by boat, foot or bike and tell us about the wildlife they see there. We need to know what’s there so that we can protect and look after our waterway creatures, for example installing bat bricks, bird boxes, otter holts and soft banks for water voles"

SUMMER? What about spring, winter and Autumn?

I think a survey is a great idea, but the guidence questions are pointless, they need to be more varied and far far better!!! I shall have to take part in the survey for next year (now I know about it), and I hope you all will too... and fill in that other species box and tell us about the interesting wildlife you have in your area.

4 Comments:

We saw a water vole today, manfully ? sorry it was probably womanfully (as it was persistent!), swimming along the offside under an enormous factory complex. Maybe the Grand Union is cleaner than we thought! Fi

Do you think they would take any notice of what we entered into the "other species" box? There was nothing about it on this year's results. Does that mean that no-one reported seeing any other species this year?